This month's Academy Awards are more about who won't take home a golden statue rather than who will.

In the weeks since the Oscar nominations were announced, conversation in Hollywood has been dominated by the lack of diversity in this year's field, prompting swift backlash and historic changes within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A: For the second year in a row, all 20 actors nominated in the lead and supporting acting categories are white (which, before 2015, hadn't happened since 1998). In response to last year's omissions, BroadwayBlack.com managing editor April Reign created the trending Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, which was revived when this year's contenders were announced.

Q: What films were overlooked?

A: Creed and Straight Outta Compton each picked up a slew of critics' prizes and guild awards but received only one Oscar nomination apiece (for supporting actor Sylvester Stallone and screenwriters Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, respectively, all of whom are white). Beasts of No Nation was shut out entirely, despite being considered a supporting-actor lock for Idris Elba (who won a Screen Actors Guild Award).

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After the Academy Award nominations were announced and there were no people of color among the 20 acting nominees, a controversy and conversation has been brewing in Hollywood over diversity and representation in the industry. Stars have been speaking out on the issue, some saying they will boycott the Oscars. Will Smith said that he will join his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith by boycotting the Oscar ceremony. "(Jada and I) have discussed it, and we're part of this community but at this current time, we're uncomfortable to stand there and say that this is okay. ... There's a regressive slide towards separatism, towards racial and religious disharmony and that's not the Hollywood that I want to leave behind. That's not the industry, that's not the America I want to leave behind."
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Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced on Friday Jan. 22 that the Academy was taking dramatic steps to diversify its membership, committing to doubling the number of women and people of color by 2020. “The Academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up,” she said in a statement. “These new measures regarding governance and voting will have an immediate impact and begin the process of significantly changing our membership composition."
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'Selma' director Ava DuVernay has praised the Academy's steps, but hopes we can use a different word to discuss the issue than "diversity." “We’re hearing a lot about diversity. I hate that word so, so much. I feel it’s a medicinal word that has no emotional resonance, and this is a really emotional issue. It’s emotional for artists who are women and people of color to have less value placed on our worldview. ... “There’s a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.”
Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

'12 Years a Slave' director Steve McQueen weighed in, saying he hoped this year would be a "watershed moment":"Forgive me; I’m hoping in 12 months or so we can look back and say this was a watershed moment, and thank God we put that right."
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Jada Pinkett-Smith announced her intention to boycott the Oscar ceremony in a Facebook video. "Maybe it is time we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities, into our programs, and we make programs for ourselves that acknowledge us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good as the so-called mainstream," she said. “We are a dignified people and we are powerful — let’s not forget it. So let’s let the Academy do them with all grace and love and let’s do us differently.”
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Spike Lee said that he was not trying to start a boycott movement, only declaring his own intent not to attend the Oscars. He also said the problem goes beyond awards."It has to go back to the gatekeepers. The people who have the green light vote," he said, referring to those studio executives who decide which films get made. "We’re not in the room (with) the executives when they have these green light meetings quarterly where they look at the scripts, they look who’s in it and they decide what we’re making and what we’re not making."
Parrish Lewis

Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o, whose win in 2014 for '12 Years a Slave' marks the last time a black actor won an Oscar, expressed her disappointment in the nominations in an Instagram post. "It has me thinking about unconscious prejudice and what merits prestige in our culture," she wrote. "The awards should not dictate the terms of art in our modern society, but rather be a diverse reflection of the best of what our art has to offer today. I stand with my peers calling for change in expanding the stories that are told and recognition of the people who tell them."
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On 'The View' Whoopi Goldberg said she didn't support the boycott, but brought up the fact that this issue is widespread in Hollywood."Why is this a conversation that we only have once a year?" she asked her co-hosts. "Every year we get all fired up and the rest of the year nobody says anything. I make movies for a living. Let me tell you what the problem is – It's not that the people doing the nominating are too white ... The problem is the people who can be helping to make movies that have Blacks and Latinos and women and all that – that money doesn't come to you because the idea is that there is no place for Black movies."
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'Furious 7' actor Tyrese Gibson has also spoken out on the issue. He called for Oscar host Chris Rock to step down from his duties. "There is no joke that (Rock) can crack," Gibson said. "There is no way for him to seize the moment and come into this thing and say, 'I'm going to say this and say that I'm going to address the issue but then I'm still going to keep my gig as the host.' The statement that you make is that you step down."
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George Clooney expressed his sympathy to the cause. "I think that African Americans have a real fair point that the industry isn’t representing them well enough," he said. "I think that’s absolutely true. ... I don’t think it’s a problem of who you’re picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films?"
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Mark Ruffalo, who is among the acting nominees this year for his performance in 'Spotlight,' expressed his support for the boycott, but said he will be attending the ceremony. "I do support the Oscar Ban movement's position that the nominations do not reflect the diversity of our community," he tweeted. "The Oscar Ban movement reflects a larger discussion about racism in the criminal justice system.I hope the OscarBan people are also willing to step up and support the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Where black bodies are in jeopardy daily."
Jonathan Short, Invision/AP

Reese Witherspoon posted her thoughts on Facebook. "So disappointed that some of 2015's best films, filmmakers and performances were not recognized," she wrote."Nothing can diminish the quality of their work, but these filmmakers deserve recognition. As an Academy member, I would love to see a more diverse voting membership."
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Oscar-winner Michael Caine said he thinks black actors need to be "patient." "There’s loads of black actors. In the end you can't vote for an actor because he's black," he said. "You can't say, 'I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good, but he's black, I'll vote for him.' ... Be patient. Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar, years.”
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A nominee for best actress this year for '45 Years,' Charlotte Rampling called the diversity outcry "racist against whites." "One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list. ... Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted ... People will always say: ‘Him, he’s less handsome’; ‘Him, he’s too black’; ‘He is too white’ ... someone will always be saying ‘You are too’ (this or that) ... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?” Later she walked back her comments, saying in a statement, “Diversity in our industry is an important issue that needs to be addressed. I am highly encouraged by the changes announced today by the academy to diversify its membership.”
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President Obama crossed paths with Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg at a ceremony at the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Jan. 27, 2016. It was the same day Obama was asked about the Oscars diversity debate ."Are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair shot?," he said. "I think that when everyone's story is told then that makes for better art."
Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images

Oscar-winner Halle Berry spoke up at a women's leadership conference in California on Feb. 2, 2016. She said Hollywood's lack of diversity stems from a fundamental lack of honesty. Filmmakers and actors should tell the truth, she said, "and the films that are coming out of Hollywood aren't truthful...aren't really depicting the importance and the involvement and the participation of people of color in our American culture." She's the only black woman to win an Oscar for lead actress.
Rich Fury, Invision/AP

Morgan Freeman noted that diversity in Hollywood is a top-down issue, and the Academy Awards are just a reflection of that. “We need to go way back before the Academy Awards. We need to go back to (who's) behind the camera, who’s helping to make movies," he told USA TODAY during an interview on Feb. 3. "I personally would try to encourage and do try to encourage writers. We need writers. If you’ve got stories to tell, that helps. That’s your biggest input. It’s unrealistic to me to say to a white studio, owned by white people, run by white people, ‘Well, why don’t you tell my story?’ (They're going to say) '(Expletive) you.' Tell your own story. You tell it.”
Richard Shotwell, Richard Shotwell/Invision via AP

Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan star in 'Rocky' spinoff, 'Creed.' Stallone is nominated for a best supporting Oscar, but he told reporters on Feb. 8 he considered staying away from the Oscars ceremony because his black director, Ryan Coogler, and Jordan were not nominated. Coogler talked him out of it, told him to go and represent the film. 'We feel you deserve it. Eventually things will change,’
Barry Wetcher, Warner Bros.

Don Cheadle plays Miles Davis in forthcoming 'Miles Ahead,' which he also directed. He told USA TODAY that film scripts often label the black characters, but not the white roles because white is considered the default position. "But guess what? Everybody has a white bias. Black people have a white bias. Latinos have a white bias. In this country it’s slowly changing, but psychiatrists have done studies, countless studies about it. We all have a white bias."
Brian Douglas, Sony Pictures Classics

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and filmmaker Steven Spielberg at the Oscars lunch on Feb. 8. Spielberg told 'The Hollywood Reporter' it's unfair to blame the Academy for the diversity problem when everyone in the film industry is responsible. "It's people that hire, it's people at the main gate of studios and independents. It's the stories that are being told. It's who's writing diversity — it starts on the page. And we all have to be more proactive in getting out there and just seeking talent."
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A: In the Academy Awards' 88-year history, only 14 black actors have won acting Oscars — the first was Hattie McDaniel for Gone With the Wind in 1940, and the last was Lupita Nyong'o (who was born in Mexico) for 12 Years a Slave in 2014. The winners' pool is even shallower for other minorities. A mere five Latino actors have won prizes (most recently, Benicio Del Toro for Traffic in 2001), as have just three actors of Asian descent (the last was Haing S. Ngor in 1985 for The Killing Fields). Similarly, the only indigenous acting winner in history is Cherokee-Irish actor Ben Johnson (for The Last Picture Show in 1972).

A: Days after the nominations were announced, honorary Oscar recipient Spike Lee wrote on Instagram that he and his wife would not attend the Academy Awards because they "cannot support it." Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, each announced they would be boycotting, in an interview with Good Morning America and a Facebook video. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore told TheWrap he would boycott, and Oscar-nominated Spotlight star Mark Ruffalo let the BBC know he'd consider it, but later tweeted that he would be there "to support the victims of clergy sexual abuse and good journalism."

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has made strides toward more inclusion in its voting body since controversy erupted last month.(Photo: Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY)

Q: What changes are being made?

A: A week after the nominations, the governing board of the academy unanimously voted to double female and minority members by 2020. Changes are also in store for those who are no longer active in the industry. Beginning later this year, each member’s voting status will last 10 years and will be renewed if that member has stayed active in movies during that decade. Members will receive lifetime voting rights after three 10-year terms, or if they have won or been nominated for an Oscar.

Q: What is the makeup of the academy?

A: According to a 2012 report by the Los Angeles Times, Oscar voters were 94% Caucasian and 77% male. The numbers are on par with film studio heads, who are 94% white and 100% male, according to the 2015 Hollywood Diversity Report published by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA.

A: Although celebrities such as Tyrese Gibson and 50 Cent have called for host Chris Rock to boycott the Oscars, the comedian is still scheduled to emcee, Oscar producer Reginald Hudlin told Entertainment Tonight, adding that Rock has chosen to rewrite his opening monologue to reflect the controversy. A diverse lineup of presenters have been announced for the ceremony Feb. 28, including Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Hart, Kerry Washington, Priyanka Chopra and Byung-hun Lee.